Where connected insights are headed next

Every major business function, from finance to ops, has evolved from reporting to intelligence.

Consumer insights is following the same path. And connected insights are the next stage. With connected insights, you continually collect, connect and centralize all your consumer data, allowing you to deliver layer-upon-layer of detailed insights into consumers.

While the old approach to consumer insights and consumer research projects largely focused on one-off static projects, connected insights fuel companies with a continuous loop of connected intelligence, brought into play from the earliest stages of project development.

But last year we found that only 38% of organizations have connected insights.

In this post, I take a look at the future of connected insights and how they transform insights teams and their organizations.

Traditional market research no longer reflects how modern organizations learn. One-off, static research projects only provide a snapshot of consumers’ behavior, sentiment and perceptions. 

Slow. Expensive. Limited. And only delivering a confined view of consumer behavior rarely gave brands a holistic, real-time understanding of their audience. 

We developed the practice of connected insights to make sure companies were building their marketing and product development decisions around reliable, detailed and accurate insights into consumer behavior. 

AI-backed connected insights give companies ongoing access to consumer insights from the earliest stages of project and product development — allowing them to fuel creative, campaigns and product development with continuous, real-time insights into their audiences.

Ultimately, connected insights allow for better, faster decision making: in 2025, connected orgs report 24 points higher satisfaction with their insights function than companies using traditional market research methods.

But despite the promise of new tech, many companies come up against a number of common challenges that get in the way of fully putting connected insights into play in their organization: 50% of companies describe their insights as fragmented across teams, departments or agencies. 

While 12% describe their insights as completely disconnected. Data fragmentation, limited budgets and time limitations are the main barriers between companies developing a system of connected insights.

But thanks to growth in AI, expanding data ecosystems and a change in business philosophy, the adoption of connected insights is quickly moving beyond the buzz of early adopters and innovators to mainstream implementation.

Thanks to huge shifts in business philosophy around decision making and developments in technology, the practice of connected insights is starting to see huge growth among innovative organizations. Here’s what’s changed. 

AI is accelerating insight generation

The majority of insights professionals now say that AI is important in their role, the highest of any function surveyed.

Companies with connected insights believe more in the power of AI than their fragmented or disconnected counterparts, with 42% of connected companies in the last year noting that AI is very important for the consumer insights industry.

AI is one of the biggest accelerators of insight generation. Traditional research and analysis often took months for teams to deliver. By instantly turning massive amounts of unstructured data into immediately-actionable insights, AI-backed platforms like Zappi help teams learn from every data point and make smarter decisions in as little as 12 hours.

Data ecosystems continue to expand

In the past, companies typically relied on one or two core approaches, like surveys and interviews, to collect their insights. Thanks to the growth of data ecosystems, they now have access to a huge volume of data across channels — helping organizations to easily connect their insights.

Today's data ecosystem includes:

• Multiple data sources: These may include social listening, creative testing data and behavioral tracking data.

• Broad integration: Connecting traditional "why" data (consumer attitudes and motivations) with "what" data (sales, click-through rates, and supply chain metrics).

• Historical benchmarks: Past campaign data is centralized, allowing for easy comparison and benchmarking.

Businesses now expect continuous learning

Many businesses are moving towards building their campaigns, creative and product development around real audience insights.

More and more, organizations are bringing in consumer insights from the earliest stages of project development. While many orgs go further, continually building on their initial research with each project: building out connected, continuous learning loops.

Steve Phillips, Co-Founder & CEO, Zappi, discusses Zappi client McDonald's iterative and experimentation-based approach to concept testing, backed by insights from their previous tests:

"To truly harness the transformative power of data, forward-thinking organizations must shift from a traditional project-based approach to one of continuous experimentation and learning.

Testing should be seen as a piece of the broader puzzle of understanding consumer needs and wants. By fostering a proactive, learning-centric approach, businesses can activate a ‘flywheel effect’where each technological deployment enhances the accuracy and depth of insights.

McDonald's embraced this mindset shift, enhancing their innovation process, particularly in developing new menu items. By integrating continuous learning and connected data points, they were able to optimize product concepts at the same pace with which they formerly validated ideas. Instead of merely focusing on fast feedback to green-light ideas late in the process, McDonald's started testing new product concepts earlier, where the goal wasn't to approve an idea, but improve it."

Here’s how the practice of connected insights might look over the next five years. 

Predictive consumer intelligence

Businesses are moving from reactive to predictive. Over the next several years, more and more brands will blend historical benchmark data and real-time consumer insights with AI forecasts to anticipate consumer wants before launch.

An increase in the use of predictive analytics will allow companies to understand how ads and products will perform before launch, integrating these predictions into early-stage creative, campaign and product development.

Using consumer intelligence to guide business decisions will become a core part of organizations' processes. A continual flow of consumer insights will support teams at key decision points.

Connected organizations are already outperforming their competitors, reporting a 53% success rate for product launches and 44% for marketing effectiveness in 2025. The gap will continue to widen as more and more brands adopt predictive analytics ahead of their peers.

Autonomous recommendations

By 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI.

From first-party to third-party data, companies hold thousands of data points on each consumer. The vastness of this data can make analysis overwhelming. With the ability to analyze and synthesize vast amounts of data, AI can deliver automatic recommendations on next-best steps for developing or refining a campaign, concept, piece of creative or product.

These automated, intelligent recommendations will become guides for brands throughout the full cycle of campaign, product and creative development.

Connected organizational decision making

As organizations continue to break down silos, connected organizational decision making will become more and more central.

In our previous Connected Insights Imperative report, we explored the CEO, CMO and insights triad, a three-way partnership that's essential for organizations to build if they want to reach accelerated maturity.

Each role brings essential capabilities:

• The CEO shares organizational authority, resource allocation and board alignment.

• The CMO brings market strategy, brand vision and customer experience leadership into the mix.

• The insights function contributes consumer understanding, data interpretation, and analytical rigor.

Shared responsibility for decision making will replace disconnected teams and siloed reporting.

Innovative teams are already breaking down traditional boundaries between leadership — sharing accountability. Over the next several years, more and more organizations will continue to adopt the shared-responsibility model:

CEOs will come to hold CMOs accountable for consumer-driven outcomes across the business, while CMOs will step into a more strategic role, backed by an expectation that consumer insights will actively shape wider marketing and business strategy.

Always-on insight ecosystems

Brands make 10x more marketing and product decisions than they did just three years ago. That's thousands every month — spanning channels, markets and consumer moments. Over the next five years, this figure will continue to grow — requiring teams to have access to a continual flow of consumer insights to back decision making.

One-off research projects will continue to be replaced with continuous insights generation.

The implementation of continuous learning loops that fuel decision making and campaign and project development will move from the sphere of early innovators to become the industry norm.

The role of AI

AI’s role will continue to shift. 

As its capabilities become more advanced, it will become even more central to the insights space: developing its role as analyst and intelligent collaborator. While AI will advance, the most successful teams will continue to use AI to support creativity, analysis and decision making, rather than use it to replace human smarts. 

AI as an analyst

In 2025, 44% of companies made AI hires in a move to improve their consumer insights capabilities. Many of these roles involve managing AI-based data analytics systems, helping teams to synthesize and analyze huge amounts of data and uncover hidden patterns and insights in their consumer data.

From automating synthetic persona development to early trend detection, teams will continue to use AI to turn unstructured data into actionable insight.

As AI refines its pattern-recognition abilities over the next few years, more and more teams will hand off focused analytics to their AI analytics tools.

AI as a collaborator

AI will continue to play a support role across creative and product development teams. Teams will continue to embed AI more deeply into their current processes, at early stages of campaign, creative and product development.

Farooq Ali, Product Director, AI Strategy & Delivery at Thoughtworks, says:

"What's really cool about this approach is that far from replacing human creativity, these algorithms serve as catalysts. They're able to spark new ideas that human minds haven't considered yet. They're not perfect, but no one expects human creative experts to come up with great ideas 100% of the time."

Humans remain responsible for judgment

AI doesn't replace human understanding — it amplifies it. The combination of data and empathy is what creates the competitive advantage for brands.

AI can synthesize, analyze, create and guide, but it can't bring human ingenuity and empathy into campaign and product development.

Gartner notes that AI delivers velocity, expertly picking up patterns in data, while the human eye is essential for evaluating emotional resonance, context and cultural nuance before a product or campaign goes to market.

Nic Umana, Global Agile Innovation Human Intelligence Director at Mars, says:

"The perfect model is always the hybrid model. Use the machines for the right jobs and use the humans for the right jobs. It's that beautiful blend of machines and humans and understanding where you may be able to automate and save time, but also where it's important to use deep empathy and insights that you can feel...is where to err on more human than machine."

The future lies in connected insights: 

Cross-functional decision making. Shared consumer intelligence. Continuous experimentation. Faster innovation cycles. 

Campaigns, creative and product development backed by a continuous stream of real-time consumer insights, amplified by AI — easily shared and acted on across an organization. 

This approach will continue to break down silos and support teams with the insights they need to make smarter, more strategic business decisions across product, creative and campaign development.